The House science committee is demanding the White House explain why top administration officials are using secret e-mail accounts and other techniques to conceal their taxpayer-paid activities from public oversight.

The evidence of officials’ efforts to evade transparency laws includes EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s use of the fake name “Richard Windsor”, and hidden e-mail accounts, according to a Nov. 16 letter sent by the committee to several White House officials, including Jackson.

The committee’s letters justified their startling statements with evidence published in The Daily Caller. The Caller’s report was based on an investigation by Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the author of a new book “The Liberal War on on Transparency.”